


the sky is big enough

by daisysusan



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Pseudo-Incest, unfortunately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25656883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysusan/pseuds/daisysusan
Summary: The war is over, except all the ways it isn't, and Sansa isn't alone, except for all the ways she is.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 18
Kudos: 144





	the sky is big enough

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to everyone who alpha- and beta-read this, and a particular shout-out to T, who talked through a whole lot of it on the phone with me literally months ago.

Winter doesn’t end with the war.

The war doesn’t really end with the war, either. Pockets of conflict linger on, or flare up suddenly, and Sansa sends her bannermen to suppress them, tell the people it’s done now and they can return to their families, resume their previous lives. The families of the north are loyal, if not to her specifically, at least to the name she has reclaimed. They call her the Queen in the North (and every time, she thinks of standing next to Jon as the lords all knelt for him, chanted for him) and she has won most of them over, now. 

Not all, but most. Enough. A handful murmur “Lady Bolton” at her when she draws near, or glance at her sidelong—she has long been able to read mistrust in the shortest of looks—but they are not enough to sway popular opinion. 

It is a far better life than she has been able to anticipate for herself in many years. She is neither a wife nor a captive, she is not beholden to any other person’s plans or ideas or grasps for power. The power is hers, and hers alone, save what she shares with her lords, and she is able to select the trustworthy among them as her closest companions.

As much as anyone can be the trusted companion to a Queen. 

As much as Sansa can allow herself to rely on others.

—

She writes to Jon the most, though her letters to Bran are longer and of more consequence. But Jon does not need all the details of the North’s politics, and she cannot bare her heart to Bran as she would like, even if he is a more reliable correspondent. Bran is her brother in name only, now, and even if he were at all the boy she remembered, as rulers they must be allies before they are kin.

Arya is even less reliable with her correspondence than Jon, and it is only with the greatest determination that Sansa does not worry on her account. She has seen what Arya is capable of.

Besides, she feels closest to Jon of all of them now. Jon was with her for so long. Reclaimed Winterfell at her side. Ruled the North at her side. She was not his queen, not in the North, or ultimately in his heart—but they functioned as if they were. Planned and argued and eventually came to agree, or at least to see each other’s side in the thing. 

It was the first time Sansa had ever allowed herself to imagine that such an equal partnership could happen in her life (that her parents’ marriage was not a freak occurrence). 

It’s not as easy, with Jon wandering in the Far North, but she turns to him for guidance when she can.

—

Sansa could pardon him, she’s fairly certain. It would not give him leave to return to the South, but she could return Winterfell to him.

She could return him to her.

She considers writing to Bran, informing him of her plans, but decides that perhaps it’s best he doesn’t know until it’s necessary. It could stir unrest, if people were to find out, and Sansa does not even know for certain that Jon will take advantage of it. And she is the monarch here, she does not need anyone else to grant this power to her. It’s hers already, as queen.

Instead, she just goes through with it quietly, proclaims to no one but herself that Jon can now move freely throughout the Kingdom of the North, and sends a raven—still white, still winter—off to him, wherever he is.

The answer doesn’t come for many weeks, arriving late into the night on the leg of the same white raven. The knock on her door startles her, as she’s seldom disturbed once she’s retired for the evening. But when she answers, the page is pressed into her hand, covered in Jon’s compact, untidy hand.

He isn’t returning, not now. He has duties in the Far North, what was beyond the wall when there still was a wall. He doesn’t call himself a king, but she knows him. The way he steps naturally into leading even when no one has asked it of him. He might not be the king of the Wildlings, or the Free People, but they look to him for guidance. But he does not say he won’t return, and she can allow herself to cling to that for a while, since there is precious little else to cling to in the short, cold days of winter. 

The close of his letter thanks her again for the pardon, and then he has signed it “Love, Jon.”

The next morning, she sits down by the fire to answer him, and realizes he has made no mention of Winterfell, or even of anything related to the North, save his inquiries about her. If he were here, she could read in his face whether he was uninterested, or simply trying to spare himself the pain of thinking about something he cannot have. (Though now he can have it, is free to return home whenever he wishes.)

It isn’t a surprise that he doesn’t come right away, and indeed she would not be shocked if he only came once or twice, as a kindness to her, and spent the remainder of his days tramping through the wildness. He sacrificed a great deal for their victory, dying and dealing out death in turn. 

Holding a person’s life in your hands and deciding whether to take it is a heavy choice, and Sansa is not sure she would trade her own miseries and traumas for his.

—

Only—it’s lonely here, even surrounded by people. They are her sworn bannermen, the lords and ladies of the North, though many are younger than she. They are not the lords and ladies she remembers from her childhood, nor are they like the ones she learned from in King’s Landing and at the Eyrie.

They are not her friends, nor are they her family. She trusts them, but only so far. 

If Jon were here, he would be able to tell her who to trust fully. Which unsteady allies she needs to sway more firmly to her side, and which she can let slip away. 

Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps he too spent too long away from their land, or perhaps it changed too much in their absence for either of them to be sure of it. 

Sansa knows, or she thinks she does, but the weight of the decisions is heavy on her. She cannot have them all, does not have enough left to offer to bring them all back into the fold. But if she chooses wrong, then the whispers will increase.

The North is not like King’s Landing. Gossip is not the same here. But it spreads nonetheless, and the whispers and stories that saved her from Ramsay Bolton could be turned on her in an instant. The north remembers.

The north remembers, and Sansa was never taught to rule.

—

In the end, perhaps unsurprisingly, what causes the unrest to intensify is not Sansa’s carefully planned politicking but the thing she did recklessly, in the secrecy of her own chambers. 

Jon comes home, for a short visit, but that is all it takes.

He gives her no notice. No raven comes from Castle Black, no direwolf howls to announce his presence, but one evening after supper there’s a knock at Sansa’s door, and Jon is on the other side of it, grinning sheepishly at her.

“Hello,” he says softly, his voice rougher than she remembers, like perhaps he has not had much occasion to use it lately. She does not know where he’s been, what he had done since they parted. If he stayed with Tormund or ventured out on his own to—she cannot imagine what he needs from the barren frozen wilds, but clearly there is something or he would have returned to her sooner.

“You came,” she says, unable to keep from betraying how much she’s wanted this. Her smile is irrepressible, tugging at her cheeks even as she tells herself that she ought to keep a calm demeanor, that that’s the regal thing to do.

Jon nods, once. “You asked me to,” he says. It’s not true, strictly. Sansa offered, but he saw through it to the request she tried to hide. 

She still does not know if it’s comforting or terrifying how he can do that. She’s glad he’s here, regardless.

“Come,” Sansa says, stepping back from her door. “Have you eaten?”

He shrugs. He’s still wearing his cloak, fur pulled close around his neck. Her chambers are warm, compared to most of Winterfell. The fire’s been roaring for hours, and the coals are glowing bright. “I can send for something,” she offers, biting her lip as she tries to decide if he’ll need to be cajoled into taking off his cloak.

But Jon smiles at her, and then he shrugs it off and murmurs, “Some supper would be wonderful. Are there pies?”

Sansa laughs, now. “There are.”

The pies have been brought, along with a large mug of ale, by the time Jon has removed enough clothing to be comfortable in the warm room. He settles close to the fire, his face already flushed from the heat. A room will have to be prepared for him, once he’s eaten. Sansa should call for someone to do it now, so he can rest as soon as he wishes.

She doesn’t. She settles onto a seat facing him, closer to the fire than she typically sits. It’s too warm, the heat pressing against the side of her face, but she remembers doing this after hours and days spent out in the harshest cold of winter. When she was reunited with Jon at Castle Black, she sat so close to the fire that her skin was pink for hours, just to remember how it felt to be too warm. The sweat that dripped from her brow then had felt incredible.

Jon sips his ale slowly, though he inhales the pies in a few bites each, and he stares into the fire.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Sansa says when the silence finally becomes too oppressive. 

“It’s nice to be back,” Jon says, the words careful. “Winterfell still feels more like home than anywhere else.”

She smiles at that, helpless. “It always did for me as well,” she offers.

Jon doesn’t smile, but there’s something wistful in his eyes. 

“I’m glad I was able to return for good,” she finishes. 

“I’m glad for you,” he says, all politeness.

—

The second day of Jon’s visit, the duration of which he has not shared with her, he goes for a hunt alone. Sansa misses her little brothers cruelly, thinks of how they would have begged to go along and, inevitably, Jon would have given in to their pleas and then caught nothing at all because of their noisy company. Arya might have gone too, but she would have abandoned the others and returned with a stack of rabbits. 

She cannot imagine Jon isn’t thinking about all this as well. It makes his daytime flight all the more transparent.

It’s an urge she well understands, after so many days and weeks alone in this half-rebuilt castle that reminds her at once of the best and worst days of her life. 

Jon appears at her door in the evening, a tray of food and ale in his hands. “I was told you hadn’t taken your supper yet,” he says. His hair is loose, and he’s dressed simply. No cloak this time, and his clothes are clean, but they’re not lordly. He could be a servant, or a comfortable farmer. 

“I haven’t,” Sansa says. “Thank you.”

Over the food, Sansa asks about his hunt, and in turn he asks about her audiences. 

Today, she dealt mostly with simple conflicts. Farmers squabbling over the border between their properties, and a father upset that his daughter did not wish to marry a neighbor boy and join their properties.

(“How did you resolve that?” Jon says, a smile tugging at his lips.

“I asked her why she didn’t want to marry him,” Sansa says. “Turns out she was madly in love with someone else.”)

Jon tells her about the hunt, such as it was. It feels excessive to call it a hunt when it was just him with a horse and a bow, he laughs. But he caught some rabbits, and a deer, all of which he took to the kitchen. 

By the time they’ve finished the food and the ale, Sansa feels a little heady from the heat and the drink and Jon’s knee brushing against hers when he moves. The touches aren’t lingering, but he isn’t jerking away from them, either. The soft contact, lasting a few seconds each time, is grounding. Sansa is not alone in her castle, but she is not surrounded by affection, either. Jon is more her equal than her subject, a royal in his own right even if he’s forsaken it, a person who understands the burdens of leadership.

He is not her brother, except in the ways he is.

When his knee rests against hers, she does not think of him as a brother. She isn’t sure she ever has—not when they were children, when she scorned him as a bastard, when she saw the pain his presence caused her mother and resented him for it.

Later, perhaps, after Castle Black. But even then he was something else. A savior, a protector, a compatriot. Not a brother, necessarily. 

She shivers when he says her name softly—“Sansa?”—a question, his voice as warm to her ears as the fire is to her skin.

“Sorry,” she says, just as softly. “Lost in thought.” He knocks his knee against hers again, smiling at her. “Don’t let me disturb you,” he says.

—

They walk together the following morning. Snow is falling softly around them, settling in Sansa’s hair and on the fur of Jon’s cloak. It isn’t the kind of heavy, oppressive cold she associates with the presence of the White Walkers, but nonetheless Sansa would not object to the arrival of an early spring. She may be a Stark, but winter holds no allure for her right now. In spring, when things begin anew, perhaps she will feel that she too can begin again.

“Winterfell is not the same,” he says to her as they break their fast after their stroll.

Sansa fights the urge to shrug. “There was a lot to rebuild, after,” she says instead.

Jon gives her a look, too penetrating for comfort. 

“And a lot of memories,” she adds, not elaborating further. He’ll understand.

And he does, nodding just once, slowly. There are things he knows despite her never having put words to them, pieces of her life that he seems to have put together from clues and hints and guesses, but he’s always correct, and Sansa is grateful for the words she does not have to say.

—

Sansa half expects Jon to leave in the same way he arrived, just vanishing into the dark one evening. Thinking of it makes her shiver.

But he doesn’t. He warns her, one evening as they dine, that he will depart on the morrow. She nods, solemn, and his gaze is steady. Unsmiling.

The silence that descends is heavy and lingering. Sansa will not ask him to stay, not if he wishes to leave, and Jon will not offer to remain. He would stay if she did ask, she is almost certain, but she will not keep him here, a hostage to her loneliness.

“It suits you,” Jon whispers into the silence. “Being queen, that is. You wear it well.”

Sansa nods, a silent acknowledgement of the compliment. “It is what I trained my whole life to do,” she points out.

This time, Jon shakes his head. “I meant—the ruling part suits you. You like it.”

“I do,” Sansa says. “I just hope I’m good at it.”

The fire pops, nearly muffling Jon’s gentle, “You are.”

She does not want to argue with him, not when it’s clear that his words are sincere. Silence settles over them again, the only interruption the soft crackling of the fire and Sansa’s own thoughts.

“Some of them look at me and see Lady Bolton,” she murmurs, the honesty overtaking her suddenly, “and others see a traitor to my family and the kingdom I now rule. A Southern lady.”

She can feel Jon’s eyes on her, but she keeps her own fixed on the fire.

“Sometimes the north remembers too well,” he says, his voice rough.

“I do not often forget my time as Joffrey Baratheon’s intended or Tyrion Lannister’s wife,” she says, “or Ramsay Bolton’s.” She doesn’t have to add, _they’re not the only ones who remember._

Jon sighs, as if fatigued by the world. Sansa does not think him fatigued by her list of unfortunate allegiances, at least not openly. He is not such a man; even if it did tire him, he would never let her see, even though she’s allowing him a glimpse at how it weighs on her. So many of her countrymen were never convinced she was enough of the North—too much a Tully in her youth, and then a Lannister by marriage. A ward of the Vale. A hostage to a usurper. 

She was not the leader they turned to during the Long Night, either, and now Jon and Arya have departed and Daenerys is dead. Rightly so, but nonetheless. The Northmen did not see what happened at King’s Landing.

“You’re a good queen,” Jon reiterates, a little harder now. 

“I’m afraid that won’t be enough,” Sansa says. Her voice only shakes a little.

Jon doesn’t say anything else. He knows what she means, and she knows that. Doesn’t have to elaborate for him.

—

In the morning, he’s gone.

—

Jon has not been gone a fortnight when the trouble flares up again—a small rebellion in one of the most distant towns, as much driven by hunger as by a true desire for change. It took them days to reach Winterfell to face the judgment of Queen Sansa, stern on her throne. 

She sends grain for the hunger, and metes out punishment to the men who chose to fight rather than seek her aid to feed their families. One of them mutters as he’s escorted out of the chamber that she ought to be delivering the sentence herself, that chastisement and labor aren’t the punishments real Starks dole out. Sansa watches how faces change as they mark the words. Some of them will be slower to heed her words, next time, especially if she challenges conventions at all.

She will need to be cautious for a while now, make sure her words and deeds do not raise any further doubts until these have settled.

The North is a hard place, and so often its people are hard too, but she will not let it make her so. There has been enough death, and she will not deal out more when she does not feel the crime requires it. After all, executions seldom quash rebellion—they make martyrs and solidify resentments. 

Still, it is odd to know she acted rightly and yet feel this fear that it will make her people mistrust her. 

—

Sansa does not tell Jon how much she misses him, even though it would probably entice him to come back. She writes to him about how the rebuilding progresses, and how they are enduring the winter, and what she hopes will come in the spring.

She does not tell him of the horrors they uncover, from time to time, as Winterfell is rebuilt. It has not been long enough since the battle against the Night King for all the remnants to have been cleared out. Sansa still avoids the crypt in the evenings, and wishes that someone was there to descend with her when she thinks about her family.

The fear will pass, certainly, but it would pass more quickly with someone at her side to remind her that the dark corners are no longer full of creeping danger. Often, she wishes she still had a direwolf of her own, a companion in the darkness the way Jon has Ghost.

She thinks it likely that Jon knows how much she misses him. That he guesses just how much his presence would soothe her and drive away the last of her demons. He always knows these things, even if he does not choose to act on them. 

If someone had asked Sansa, as a child, which of her siblings she would feel closest to as an adult, she would not have said Jon. In fact, she would not even have considered Jon her brother. She would have said Robb, most likely, and he would not have reciprocated—he would have said Jon. Arya would also have said Jon. No one would have said Sansa.

She doesn’t tell Jon this either, but she does write to him about how much she misses her family. Their family, she writes, something she would never have acknowledged as a girl. Jon is even less her brother now than he was then, but now she wants to claim the relationship she scorned.

Jon writes back about their family, too. He gets letters from Bran, and more letters from Arya than Sansa does. The repaired relationships of adulthood cannot truly compare with the intimacy and trust Arya and Jon had as children, so of course Arya writes to him all the details of her travels. Her adventures.

Arya would also have stayed, had Sansa asked. If she had gone to her sister and pleaded for a companion, or for a protector. But Arya wanted to leave, just like Jon did, and Sansa won’t hold her a hostage here to duty that isn’t hers. Staying in the North is no one else’s obligation but her own. Still, she treasures the updates she gets from Arya, and the ones Jon shares with her.

Being alone at Winterfell isn’t the same as it was during the war, despite her nightmares.

Sansa writes a whole letter full of news about the North, and how pleased she is to hear about Arya’s discoveries to the West, and she does not mention once the things she struggles with. Except that night, she dreams about the day she found him again, about sitting in front of the fire in Castle Black and insisting that he accept her apology.

In the morning, she scrawls “I miss you, too,” at the bottom of the letter before she sends it.

—

The next time Sansa hears the murmurs, it isn’t from a remote village. It’s from one only a few hours’ ride from Winterfell, where some violence has broken out after someone suggested that perhaps the North needs a new ruler. Someone less closely tied to the throne in King's Landing, who would allow them to be truly independent. It’s suppressed quickly by other villagers, who bring the offenders in front of her, accused of treason. 

This, she cannot solve with grain and a sentence to hard labor. She cannot swing the sword for an execution either, though. She does not have such a blade, nor does she have the strength. Even if she could learn, train to lift the weight and swing with enough force, she does not know if she could bring herself to do it. This too is not something she was ever trained for.

If Jon were here, perhaps he could do it.

Or perhaps he would refuse, declaring that his days of carrying out executions are over, that not wanting to take more lives of his purported allies is why he accepted his sentence without complaint. He killed his brothers, he told her shortly after they were reunited. Hanged so many of them, after they killed him. She does not want to imagine what it cost him to do that. She could not ask for this, even if he was at her side.

Just another thing she wants but can never ask him for. Some things have to be given freely.

Some problems she has to solve on her own.

In the end, she imprisons the man. It’s a lengthy sentence, and he will likely see the end of his days in the cell her order sends him to.

—

Sansa does not hear another treason case before Jon comes back, when the days are flirting with the idea of getting longer and the snow isn’t melting yet but it is glistening in the sun, threatening to turn to water at any moment.

This time, Ghost beats him back, appearing in the courtyard by himself, making a plaintive noise when Sansa throws her arms around him. 

Direwolves are not pets, but nonetheless he accepts the indignity.

Jon arrives later the same day. He makes a grander entrance this time, striding into the Great Hall while she’s taking counsel with some of the lords and ladies. Heads turn, and Sansa hears more than a few gasps as they recognize him despite his scars and his furs.

“Cousin,” she says, her voice steady and her smile careful. Regal.

“Queen Sansa,” Jon says, and for the length of half a heartbeat she thinks he’s going to drop to one knee in front of her like he’s swearing allegiance. 

He doesn’t, but he inclines his head too deep and too slow for it to mean anything else. 

Her breath catches, and she prays Jon’s presence is distraction enough that no one else notices. He probably did, so careful and attentive and observant, but he’ll never comment on it. Not unless she does first.

It should be hard to love someone so withdrawn, but Sansa cannot imagine anything else at this point. She cannot imagine a life where her closest ally—companion—is anyone other than Jon, even if he seldom visits. Even if his letters come infrequently, because when they do she can tell from the length and thoughtfulness that he knows they matter.

“Come, cousin,” she says, rising from her seat. Everyone else rises too, bowing their heads as she passes. “Walk with me.”

“Of course,” he says, his voice low and almost rough. She is not sure he speaks loudly enough for anyone else to hear. He barely spares a glance for anyone else as they leave the hall, him always a half-step behind her. She is a queen; he is only a disgraced claimant for another throne. 

She wishes he walked in step with her. 

—

An envoy arrives from King’s Landing while Jon is visiting, a young man arriving on horseback in the evening with a bag of letters. He presses the bag into her hands, after having asked for the Hand of the Queen. 

“I have not named one,” she says, all regal poise, like it is not a reminder of how brutally alone she is here.

“Your Majesty,” the envoy says, nodding. He’s well trained, his eyes turned down as he backs away from her. 

The bag is mostly letters from the king in the South and his Hand, unsurprisingly, with a brief missive from Brienne tucked amongst them. Sansa reads them in her solar, Jon sitting near her as he writes a note of his own. They speak, but only occasionally, about the contents of the letters. Bran has grand ideas, Tyrion more realistic ones, Brienne’s the most grounded of all. Sansa could spend all her days like this, watching Jon push his hair out of his eyes as he hunches over his writing. 

When he looks up from his paper, she hands him the stack of letters. “I’d appreciate your thoughts,” she says. He nods, taking them from her hands.

Sansa embroiders while Jon reads, her fingers flying over the edges of a new cloak, lighter than her winter ones. Brighter colors, for the coming spring. She is working flowers into the collar, though she may add a wolf leaping through them. Not exactly the Stark sigil, but it feels like it suits nonetheless. Perhaps she’ll offer to embroider something for Jon if he stays long enough.

“Bran is very ambitious,” Jon says when he’s done reading. Sansa laughs.

“He is,” she agrees. 

“I think that with Tyrion’s modifications, the plan to give all the remaining kingdoms more self-governance is a good one,” Jon says slowly. “I suppose it’s to allay some of the resentment in Dorne and the Iron Islands after you broke the North off entirely?”

Sansa nods. “I suspect so, though no one will put it to paper.”

Jon is quiet for a moment. “Do you think they will separate entirely?” 

“Perhaps,” Sansa says. “It would not surprise me to learn that it was being discussed. The Iron Islands were independent for generations—”

“And Dorne never truly accepted rule from the Iron Throne,” Jon says, soft words echoing their childhood lessons. 

“I understand why Bran and Tyrion wish to keep them in the fold, but I cannot shake the thought that perhaps it would be best for the kingdom to dissolve entirely,” Sansa says. She bites her lip, surprised by the nervousness that she feels upon voicing the thought.

“It’s not treason for you to say,” Jon offers, his smile twisting a little wry. “You’re not a subject of the South.”

“I suppose not,” she says, the nervousness escaping as a small peal of laughter.

—

“You don’t have a Hand,” Jon says, as they sup later, in her solar again. He fits in so easily here, dressed in all black even though he’s ceded most of his furs as a concession to the warmer days. He lets her sit closer to the fire nonetheless. Refills her goblet before she asks. 

Jon, unlike the envoy, clearly expects an explanation about why she won’t share her burdens..

Sansa weighs the things she could say—the truth, a comfortable lie, a more uncomfortable and more believable lie. The truth. 

“I have not found anyone I can trust enough,” she says. Her voice does not break. Her eyes do not fall to the floor. This, she was taught. How to keep a regal bearing even when her soul is crumbling. 

Jon is silent for far too long. Sansa’s stomach sinks, but her eyes never do. The standards for the Hand of the Queen are high. It is not surprising that she has not yet found someone she can place her faith in. He will understand.

That’s what he does—he understands her.

Except now he’s looking at her quizzically, his brow furrowed and his mouth turned down just a little.

“You cannot rule without assistance,” he says finally. “You need advisors.”

“I have them,” Sansa says. She does not say _I have you_ because it would not be true, no matter how badly she wishes it would be. “I have plenty of guidance and support.” She drinks from her wine, carefully keeping her hand steady as she raises the goblet. She does not feel steady, not when Jon is sitting close and watching her like he sees all the things she’s hidden away carefully.

Jon does not press, after that. He does not insist that she name a Hand, or that she find someone to rule alongside her. He takes her at her word that her advisors ease the burden enough, and after all—he has been a ruler, in his own way. It was not a kingdom, but being Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch was a heavy weight nonetheless. 

He talks about it very seldom, and she does not have the words to ask, even though she would like to know. Would like to offer him her support, such as it is.

The silence between them drags on so long that Sansa nearly starts squirming, but even though he does not speak, Jon stays seated by her. Eventually, his leg shifts so that it’s just barely touching hers under the table, and she does not draw away from it. Perhaps this is the best kind of support they can offer each other.

—

Jon is in the Great Hall with her when a man and a woman are dragged in in chains. Their furs are bedraggled, their hair wet, and their eyes hard. 

“Your majesty,” the man says. It does not sound deferential. 

Next to Sansa, Jon tenses, ready to jump to her defense. She glances at him, hoping he can read the calmness in her gaze, but he does not unclench.

Turning her attention to the people in front of her, she nods. “Why have you brought them here like this?” she asks the men who brought them in. They’re also dirty, their clothes muddied and their eyes almost as hard. But their voices are civil, their eyes downcast. 

“We heard them plotting your death, your majesty.”

The sharp intake of breath from Jon is probably too subtle for anyone else in the hall to notice, but Sansa feels it like a shiver down her spine. She ignores it, keeping her eyes fixed forward. “Tell me what you heard,” she says. She wants to squeeze Jon’s hand, or brush her fingers across his arm, just to steady him. To remind him that they did not succeed, because she’s here now.

It would be too overt; she cannot do it. 

The conspirators were captured a few days ago when they were overheard in a barn discussing how best to infiltrate Queen Sansa’s court with someone who could get her alone. The plan was to find someone she might be seduced by, might take to bed, and then to murder her privately that way. Sansa cannot help her shudder, and Jon’s gaze is heavy on her.

“Is that all?” she asks, almost afraid to hear that there might be more.

The men cast their eyes down to the floor. “One of them—he said you have a fondness for traitors and—” he does not finish his sentence, but his eyes flick to Jon, and that’s all Sansa needs to understand. Jon makes them trust her less.

Her stomach churns. Jon stays seated next to her, almost in the position a Hand would take, except he is not her Hand. Maybe he cannot ever be. She needs to trust her Hand, but her subjects need to as well. Someone just, regarded as fair, who can preside over things when she is not able to. Just because Jon would be adept at it does not mean that he is a good choice.

Not that she thinks he would agree to it anyway.

“Very well,” Sansa says, the words crisp and dry. She does not swallow against the fear. “Take them to the dungeons for tonight. We will speak to them in the morning.” She gestures for two guards to come forward, taking them from the men who brought them in.

Once the traitors are led away, Sansa inclines her head towards the men. “Thank you for your service,” she says calmly. They both bow deeply, murmuring about how it’s the least service they could give to her, their queen.

Sansa is glad they’re loyal, but she doesn’t need to hear the scraping and ingratiation. “You’re both welcome to stay the night,” she says when there’s a brief lull. “Break your fasts with us tomorrow, before you set back on the road.”

“If it please your majesty,” one of them says, and finally Sansa cannot help her smile.

“It does please me,” she says. “Thank you again for apprehending some of my enemies.”

They leave shortly thereafter, escorted to an empty chamber for the night, and Sansa ends the audiences after only a few more. Jon follows her out of the hall, close on her heels. 

“Sansa,” he hisses as soon as they’re in a deserted corridor. “You did not tell me—”

She nods. “I did not want to worry you, when there is nothing you can do to help.”

“This is not the first time such a plot has been discovered,” he says. It’s not a question.

“It’s not,” she says. Jon grabs for her hand, catching her wrist and holding on too tight. His grip is nearly painful, and she does not flinch or pull away. “It is a normal part of being a ruler, especially over a territory that has been so recently disputed.” She pauses to breathe, and Jon takes a step closer, crowding her against the wall.

He’s not tall enough to loom over her, and what’s more, she can feel the fear radiating off him. He was assassinated, she reminds herself. Murdered in cold blood by people he trusted, and somehow he came back to her. 

“Jon,” she says softly. She wanted her voice to be steady, calming, but it isn’t. She can feel it shaking and hear the way it’s hoarse as she pushes past the lump in her throat. _I have it under control_ , she’d wanted to say. _Nothing bad is going to happen to me here, safe in my own castle surrounded by my loyal attendants and guards_. She cannot quite find the words.

Jon is so close she can feel the brush of his breath, and she has to squeeze her eyes shut to keep tears from leaking out.

She wants—she wants his touch in more places than just his warm hand tight around her arm.

He comes another half-step closer, and something in her shatters. Whispering his name again, she lets him curl his arms around her back, burying her face in the furs resting on his shoulders. She feels Jon exhale against her hair, a breath that feels like it could be her name. His arms squeeze her against him, and for a moment she imagines she can feel the thudding of his heart.

It’s just her own, of course. They’re both too warmly dressed, and she doubts his heart is racing the way hers is. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” she breathes into his cloak, the words muffled to almost nothing. If Jon hears her, he doesn’t acknowledge it. Still, she doesn’t let herself add, _you make me feel safe_.

They stay there for as long as Sansa thinks they can get away with, but she forces herself to pull away when she hears footsteps approaching. Jon’s hand has only just dropped from her back when a young maid comes upon them, curtseying a little awkwardly. “Your majesty,” she murmurs. “My lord.”

And then she scurries past on her way elsewhere, leaving Jon and Sansa standing just a hair too close. Sansa wants to reach for him again, maybe lace their fingers together this time, or take his arm to steady herself. Instead, Jon takes another step back, looking past her shoulder instead of directly at her. 

“I’ll see you later,” he says, abrupt to the point of rudeness. 

She nods, and Jon turns on his heel immediately. Sansa has never asked him to stand on ceremony with her, but he does not typically just vanish. It leaves her rattled, and she stands in the hall for too long before she retreats to her chambers for her midday meal.

—

Sansa wakes early the next morning, before a maid has even come in to stoke the fire. She stays abed, trying to doze but mainly just staring at the heavy wooden beams above her. They aren’t the same ones her parents slept under; after the battle, most of the roof had to be rebuilt and Sansa’s chambers—the Lord’s chambers—are at the top of the castle. They look almost identical to the ones Sansa remembers from her childhood, though.

If she did not know they had been replaced—if she had not overseen their replacement—she would think the room unchanged.

It’s an odd piece of continuity, when her life has had so many abrupt shifts and breaks. Her father’s death, fleeing King’s Landing, her marriage to Ramsay, fleeing Winterfell. Finding Jon again. Somehow, despite everything, this room is almost the same. 

When the maid comes in, Sansa feigns sleep until the fire is roaring, and then she slips out from the furs and curls up in the seat closest to the flames, wrapping herself in a robe. It’s early yet, the dawn just beginning to crack the sky, and she has hours before she has to hear the treason case. 

She wishes Jon was here, sitting across from her. He’s quiet in the mornings, even moreso than the rest of the time, but she likes the way he moves slowly before he’s come fully awake, and the care he takes in choosing his words. His hair falls in his eyes, not slicked back. 

It has been so many years since she saw him like that—unpolished and vulnerable. The closest was probably the way he’d clung to her yesterday, almost like when they found each other again. 

Despite her best intentions, Sansa finds herself imagining Jon coming to sit with her not from his own chambers down the corridor, but from her own bed. It would be warmer with him under the furs as well, and she might rise early if she grew too warm. He could just take the few steps over to her when he woke, pulling on a robe to match hers over his shirt. 

The thought makes her ache.

She has not even had time to fully clear the thoughts from her mind when she hears a soft knock at her door, and she knows that it’s Jon. He’s the only person who sneaks into her space at this hour, when the sun is above the horizon but the castle has only just begun to wake. They both rise early out of habit.

Sansa wraps the robe more closely around herself before she opens the door for him. 

“Your majesty,” Jon says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“My lord,” Sansa replies, letting her mouth curl up to match his. “Do come in, I can call for a meal.”

Jon is fully dressed, not wearing a robe, but otherwise the picture of him settling across from Sansa by the fire is almost as she imagined it. He’s silent for a moment, and then he furrows his brow and says, “You’re to hear from the traitors today.”

Sansa nods, not quite as sharp as she would like. It’s early still, and she has not yet roused herself fully.

“I would appreciate it if you were there,” she says, letting her eyes linger on his. “I value your judgment.”

Jon’s nod is hesitant, and he stares into the fire instead of back at her. “Will you sentence them to die?”

“No,” she says quietly. “I did not the last time, and I cannot deal out death on a whim.”

Jon settles deeper into the seat, and his eyes return to her face. “I cannot imagine that passed without criticism,” he offers.

Sansa shakes her head. “No,” she repeats. “But that does not mean I regret it.” The quizzical look she gets demands she explain further, and she takes a deep breath before she does it. “There has been enough death here, and it’s not as if I could execute them without criticism either.” Her mouth twitches. “I cannot do it myself, after all. I’m no swordsman.”

The look that passes over Jon’s face makes it clear he had not considered that before. “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword,” he says. Sansa feels her mouth twist, and her stomach churn. “They would understand, if you did not do it yourself,” he adds.

“Some of them would,” Sansa murmurs. “Some of them would not. It is not so different from now, when some of them understand why I am not sending them to their deaths and some do not.” Jon nods carefully, and Sansa adds, “It is not as if we have men to spare, Jon.”

He tips his head, conceding the point. “Change is necessary,” he says. “Traditions cannot hold forever.”

“No,” Sansa whispers. 

—

Barring an emergency, the traitors and the men who discovered them are the only subjects Sansa will hear reports from today. Tomorrow, she can settle disputes and correspond with some of the lords about when planting can begin, but for today this will be plenty. 

The man and woman who plotted her death are brought in in chains, and pushed down to kneel on the hard stone in front of her. Their eyes are downcast, but their shoulders are not slumped. She can read the defiance in them.

Jon is standing behind her to her left. She cannot see his face, but she can see the faces of the others around the room, flanking both sides. It is the same place that the others knelt, where she accused Arya to draw Baelish out. She’s faced down people accused of lesser crimes here too—of stealing a neighbor’s grain, or not paying laborers for their work. Breaking a marriage contract, freeing a rival’s horses from the stable. She does not mind resolving those, helping the parties find a way to come to an agreement, or at least helping the person who has been cheated get fair wages or payment for lost goods.

But treason is something else. A crime where she is targeted, without success.

She cannot force her subjects to love her, but she cannot allow them to end her life.

The men who caught the traitors are brought in as well, their heads held high.

“Tell me what you heard,” she says to them. One of the traitors exclaims, sharp and angry. “You will be allowed to speak,” Sansa says. Her voice is perfectly level. Her hands do not shake.

The story is recounted in pieces, halting in places. Several times the traitors interject, righteously indignant that their behavior is not being reported accurately, but always about details, never about their goals. Still, Sansa lets them speak. It is only fair.

She can hear a sharp inhale from Jon when they get deep enough into their story to attempt an explanation for why they were hiding in a barn that did not belong to them and discussing how best to infiltrate the queen’s inner circle. Neither of them outright says that they suspect her true loyalty is not to the North, but Sansa has heard it all before. 

They just wanted to be sure that she isn’t loyal to the Lannisters, they do not quite say. They aren’t certain that she hasn’t been corrupted by the Boltons, they do not quite say. They don’t trust her judgement. A few times, their eyes fall on Jon, and one of them makes a comment about her advisors. The meaning is not subtle.

When everyone has spoken their piece, Sansa lets silence hang over the hall for a few long minutes. If she leaves to confer with her council, it will send the wrong message to her subjects. She must make this decision alone.

“I do not think we can say for certain that their aim was my death,” she says finally. There are a few outraged squawks, and a few sage nods. “However, it is clear that their plans were treasonous, and therefore they will be given the same treatment as the other traitors who have been brought before me: they will work rebuilding what has been destroyed in the North.”

She wants to turn so that she can see Jon’s face, even though it will likely be carefully schooled. She can read his emotions easily enough that she would be able to judge his approval. It will have to wait until they can be alone. 

“Very well, your majesty,” one of the guards says.

“Return them to the cells while we determine where they can be of use,” Sansa says. “They must be carefully guarded, and kept well apart so they cannot speak.”

And then it’s over, and the hall clears around her. Jon stays, she knows, because she does not hear footsteps from him. He does not speak until the room is empty save for the guards, nor does he let his hand brush over her shoulder until then. His touch is impossibly brief, barely more than a breath, and Sansa almost convinces herself she imagined it until she sees his hand, held awkwardly in the space between them.

She wants him to reach back out and touch her again. The memory of hugging him yesterday is fresh, of his arms tight around her and burying her face against her neck. She cannot do it here, of course. Yesterday was too much of a risk, too much weakness for a queen to show so publicly. 

Sansa curls her hands around the arms of her seat. Her palms are damp, and her breathing has not entirely leveled yet. 

“I do not think you need my approval,” Jon murmurs, “But you handled that very well.”

“Thank you,” she says softly.

—

Sansa’s afternoon is taken up by meeting with her council, one of the sessions that drags out as the sun dips in the sky. It feels like they debate everything, from the issue of the traitors this morning to the best plans for stretching the remaining food stores until a harvest can be brought in. They talk about Jon as well, and about the length of his visit this time.

As usual, the opinions are many and varied, and Sansa wants to appreciate them all. Typically, she does. But as soon as someone makes the suggestion that, perhaps, it’s time for Jon to slink back away north, dread settles heavy in the pit of her stomach. She can see the glances on faces in the hall too, and she knows of the whispers as well as anyone, but she also knows what she felt this morning in her solar, and she does not know that she can be strong enough to deprive herself of that.

Still, plenty of her advisors and her subjects do not trust him, and she cannot fault them for that given Jon’s actions. Even if she wishes she could, because he does not deserve it.

By the time the discussion slows down, Sansa is too exhausted to contribute. She waves the final few comments off, rising and announcing that she’s going to sup, and they can continue this another time. 

Outside the chamber, Jon is waiting for her. He’s leaning against the wall, his posture suggesting that he’s been waiting for some time. 

“My queen,” he murmurs as she emerges. Sansa feels herself flush.

“Jon,” she says, scoffing. He shakes his head.

“You deserve it.”

She smiles, helpless. “Sup with me.”

Jon smiles back at her. “How could I turn down such an offer from my queen?” 

—

“Come with me,” she says after their meal, extending her arm to Jon. He takes it without question, letting her hand curl around his elbow.

“Where are we going?”

Sansa closes her eyes for a moment. “The crypt,” she says. “I don’t like to visit it alone.” Jon glances at her, but he does not say anything. They went there together shortly after they returned to Winterfell, when every inch of the place still reeked of the Boltons and Sansa felt like her own terror oozed from the walls. They’d looked at the faces of their family members, both of them struggling to find any words until Jon had said, softly, that they needed to find a place for Rickon.

Sansa remembers the way she’d inhaled sharply, and then nodded. The idea of making a place for her youngest brother in the crypt made her blood run cold, but at least there was certainty in it. Arya and Bran were still missing, then, even though most of them thought Bran dead.

They walk there in silence, Jon’s arm steady under Sansa’s hand. His breathing is just the slightest bit ragged.

“This was the first place I saw Arya when she returned,” Sansa says in the present. Her voice shakes, but only a small amount. Jon nods. The candlelight casts dramatic shadows on his face, his eyes sunken into darkness.

“She told me,” he says. It does not surprise Sansa that he knows.

“I was just relieved that we would not have to add her to the rolls of the dead.” She cannot look at Jon. “I told her how much happier you would be to see her than you were to see me.”

“I was so happy to see her,” he says. It’s barely audible when he adds, “But I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I was to see you for the first time at Castle Black.”

Sana shakes her head, not rubbing her eyes when they start to prickle. “Don’t tell me that. I was—”

“You were a child,” Jon says. “We’ve discussed this already. You were my family.”

When Sansa laughs, it’s too harsh and dry. Cut through with her real fear. “Am I not anymore?”

Jon laughs too, but he takes her hand in his, squeezing it gently. “It’s not the same.”

“I suppose it’s not,” she says. In the distance, a torch burns out. No one will come re-light it while the queen is here, though. She could do it herself, if she had a candle. “I like this version of it better.”

When she turns, Jon is furrowing his brow. She shrugs, and squeezes his hand back. “We get along much better as cousins than we did as siblings,” she says. “I like getting to like you.”

It feels almost like too much of an admission, a thing that might lead Jon to the truth of how she feels, a thing she tries to obscure even from herself. Her position is tenuous enough, even without a husband who will raise so many scandals. Or a lover, for that matter. 

“So do I,” Jon says. He smiles, clearly reaching his eyes even though they’re still shadowed. Sansa’s stomach turns over.

“I like having you here,” she says, another admission that goes just a little too far. Jon will realize the truth soon enough, she supposes. He doesn’t respond by saying he likes to be here; she didn’t expect it. Jon has plenty of reasons to dislike being at Winterfell, even if Sansa is here. Even if he likes Sansa enough to be conflicted.

“I like being with you,” Jon says, finally. It’s barely more than a whisper, lost in the still air of the crypt. It’s like the tombs have swallowed his admission the way Sansa wishes they had swallowed hers. 

Sansa breathes in slowly, and out even more slowly than that. “I wish I could ask you to stay,” she says, after so long that the silence has begun to feel like a weight around them. “I need a Hand.”

“I do not think my presence here is helping you, Sansa,” Jon says, the words as soft as his admission that he likes being with her. When Sansa glances at him, he is not meeting her gaze.

Sansa finds herself unable to come up with a meaningful answer. He isn’t entirely wrong—there are plenty of murmurs about Jon when he visits, a kinslayer and a kingslayer and a Targaryen, and she still is not sure which of those causes the most offense to the people—but he is not seeing the whole picture.

He has not seen the murmurs about Sansa, about her Lannister husband and then her Bolton one. That she is not a true Stark or is not loyal enough to the North. Jon’s presence does not make the politics better, but she is not certain it makes them worse, either. At least when he visits she is not facing it alone. 

Jon is here in the crypt with her.

“Not everything is about politics,” she finally says. Her voice breaks, but maybe too faintly for Jon to notice.

“It is when you’re a queen,” he says. His face is so carefully blank. “Your chief advisor cannot be all the things I am. You know that.”

“I’m queen,” Sansa retorts. “My advisors can be whoever I wish them to be.”

Jon looks around for a moment, watching the candlelight flickering over the statues. “You’re not that kind of queen,” he says finally, and Sansa knows he’s right.

—

Sansa meets with her council the following morning, so early that dawn is barely cracking the sky. She does not ask Jon to join her, though she suspects he would. He seldom denies her anything that she asks for straightforwardly. 

The meeting is long, the sun high in the sky and warm by the time Sansa leaves the meeting chamber for a brief recess. Her back is stiff, and she takes her crown off for just a moment to roll her neck and shoulders. It is better that Jon was not there, given what was said.

“He is a Targaryen,” one of her lords had insisted, his voice reedy with anger. 

Another had beaten his fists on the table, thudding against the heavy wood, and called it a laughable assertion—“Snow was raised in his house as a Stark bastard, he is no more a Targaryen than you are!”

It was what Sansa had wanted to say, but could not.

“Blood always shows,” the first lord had insisted. Sansa had bitten the inside of her cheek, unwilling to let herself speak in his defense since it would sway the council. Their opinions matter; she needs to know what the other houses and families of her kingdom think. It does not matter, right now, that Jon is as much Stark by blood as he is Targaryen. That he has never claimed that heritage.

That he is still Jon.

She draws a breath in slowly as she reenters the chamber, steadying herself before she bites on her cheek hard enough to draw blood. This is ruling, and she is determined to do it well.

“He’s not mad,” another lord weighs in as soon as they settle back around the table. “That’s always the concern with Targaryens, whether they’ll go mad, and Snow has shown himself to not be that.”

Yet another nods. “He’s not the offspring of siblings wedded to each other.”

The first lord, ruddy with frustration, slaps his hand against the table. “He is still a kinslayer!”

“He saved the kingdom from a madwoman!” another yells. Sansa cannot take another minute of this, much less hours on end, but nor can she stop it. They must be allowed to have it out, to fight until they come to some kind of conclusion. Whatever it may mean for Jon. 

“Your majesty?” someone asks her eventually, and she startles briefly as she refocuses on the room.

“Yes?” she asks, voice measured.

“You have not taken a position on Snow,” a softspoken Mormont lord says. 

Sansa smiles, helpless. “I think it’s clear that I do not hold him a traitor or a danger, but I cannot deny that my views are colored by our history,” she says, careful. There are nods around the table. “He is my cousin,” she says, and then, more reluctantly, “We were raised as brother and sister. If there is a true danger from him to my reign, I am not sure I would be the first to see it.”

A few voices protest lightly, though Sansa only gives any weight to one of them—a lady who murmurs, “You have proven your skill at identifying threats many times over.”

In the end, even without her input, they come to a fair conclusion: Jon himself is not a traitor, nor is he mad, but the people do not all trust him, and it may be hard to sway them on that. 

Sansa always knew she was not going to be able to ask him to stay.

—

They ride out the following day, Sansa shirking her duties for the morning, or at least for part of it. They’d both risen early, and they’ll return in time for her to take a midday meal with her advisors if necessary. If not, she can tend to some of her correspondence. 

The spring melt is setting in for real now, the snow glistening and turning to water in places. They pass a stream rushing through the trees, the water nearing the banks.

“We spent so long preparing for a hard winter and in the end, it did not even last as long as the one before it,” Sansa says. Jon is silent. “There was such a toll, though,” she adds.

Jon hums. “It felt like it lasted an age while it was happening.” The corner of his mouth is twisted up, more like anguish than amusement.

“It did,” Sansa agrees. “A great deal happened.”

Neither of them says _a great many people died_ , but Sansa can see from the look on Jon’s face that he’s thinking it as well. They ride on in silence, their horses’ hooves clipping against the still-frozen ground. 

A muddy patch startles Sansa out of her thoughts, her horse stepping cautiously. She tugs the mare to a halt, wanting a moment to study the trees, the drifts of snow and the bare ground between them. The leaves have not come out yet.

Beside her, Jon stills his horse. “Oh, Sansa,” he says, and she’s taken aback by how ragged his voice is. “I think this is where we found the direwolf puppies, all those years ago.”

Sansa’s heart clenches, and she closes her eyes for a long moment. “That feels like another lifetime,” she murmurs. 

“It was,” Jon says. 

Ghost is somewhere nearby, the smallest and the only one still with them. He’ll return in his own time, Sansa knows. He always does. Sometimes it feels like Ghost is the tiniest bit hers, like he sensed the hole in her heart and decided he could accept her as well as Jon.

She watches Jon looking around, like he’s hoping his eyes will land on Ghost between the trees, but Ghost doesn’t appear. “Arya told me she saw Nymeria,” he says finally. “On her way back to Winterfell, she was set on by a pack led by a massive wolf who walked right up to her and then led them off.”

Sansa swallows, shaking her head. “She didn’t tell me.” 

They’re not quite close enough for Sansa to reach out and take Jon’s hand in hers. “I imagine she feels guilty,” Jon says, musing. “About—”

“Probably,” Sansa says. Not _she should_ , or _I’m glad_ , the way it would have been a few years ago, but she cannot absolve Arya of guilt, or take it away from her. That is Arya’s burden. 

The silence drags on between them, broken only by the faint drip of melting snow off the trees and the rushing stream in the distance.

“I miss them,” Jon says. “I cannot be here without thinking constantly about how they all should be, too.”

Sansa sighs. “I think about every day,” she says. “But it’s better than being anywhere else.”

Jon is quiet for a long time, but when he finally speaks the words are broken, almost harsh. “I cannot bear it, Sansa. All I think about is all the ways I failed them all.” 

“Jon,” Sansa breathes. “You did not—there was nothing more you could have done. You saved us all, in the end.”

The look Jon shoots her then is pained. “You think that does not haunt me most of all?” He sounds angrier now, and it sparks something in Sansa, makes her want to push back at him. She does not deserve his anger, not for this.

“Why have you come at all, if you don’t want to be here?” she asks, her voice harsh with anger and suppressed tears.

“Because you asked me to!” Jon says, and then immediately he looks stricken, like that wasn’t what he meant to say at all.

“I didn’t,” Sansa says, but it’s a weak offering and she knows it. She did not ask with words, simply with every other part of herself, and Jon knows her well enough to hear that request as clearly as if she’d spoken the words to him.

“Sansa,” he says, and then nothing else. It feels like there’s something he will not allow himself to say, looking away from her, his fists clenched tight. “I left for a reason.” His voice is taut, the words strained. 

The only response she has for that is a meager “I know,” her voice unsteady instead of angry. “I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”

It’s not a surprise when Jon’s response is “I can’t stay any longer. I’m—needed in the North.”

“Don’t,” she says, the words escaping her mouth before she can consider them. “Stay.” She cannot remember the last time she spoke without thinking, but she’s suddenly desperate to keep Jon here, where they can solve this. Where she can see him.

“No,” he says softly. His voice breaks, just the tiniest bit. “I cannot, Sansa.”

In an odd way, it is a relief to find that he will not yield to her every request. She does not want that kind of power over him.

She wants to ask why, but she bites her tongue. He looks no happier about it than she feels, and that too is a relief. It isn’t that she wants him to be in pain, but she cannot help the way it comforts her that neither of them relishes parting. Sansa cannot help herself clinging to the idea of being wanted. Even if it is not as a wife, or as a woman, she likes to know that her companionship is desirable to Jon.

She will suffer without his company, and having that be a mutual feeling is better than suffering alone.

—

Jon leaves without any more warning than their conversation, bidding her a good night and then nowhere to be found in the morning, his things gone from his chamber. It isn’t until the evening that Sansa finds the note tucked in her chamber, a single sheet with Jon’s familiar hand scrawled across it. 

_My queen_ , he’s written in salutation, _I cannot stay here knowing that it endangers your rule and makes your subjects trust you less. You are too good a queen and too devoted to them for me to allow your rule to be sabotaged. If leaving is the best thing I can do for you, then I do not hesitate to do it._

_Yours,_

_Jon_

She traces her thumb over the letters of his name. _Yours_ , he wrote. and she does not want to agonize over the meaning but—they have always chosen their words carefully with each other, unwilling to revisit the casual stings of childhood. She has no reason to believe he was not deliberate in this, too, especially in light of their final conversation before he left. 

The thought of it makes her shiver. 

It cannot be, not if Jon cannot be here with her, but she spends a long time running her fingers across the words he wrote nonetheless.

—

Sansa’s council waits longer than she expected them to before they raise the issue of marriage. She’s anticipated it since nearly the moment she took the throne, but the months have crept into years, and the leaves are coming back on the trees. 

It’s been so long that she’s genuinely taken aback when they finally ask her if she plans to take a husband, her composure momentarily only surface-deep.

Still, she manages a small smile and a delicate, “I was wondering when that was going to come up.”

A few of the people around the table laugh politely.

“There is an issue of heirs, your majesty,” says Lady Cerwyn. Around the table, a few throats are cleared pointedly,

The Mormont advisor, one Sansa feels she does not yet have an understanding of despite his years on her council, nods. “I do not think it would be necessary,” he says cautiously, “to make your husband a king.” The look he gives her is clear, almost calculating. “As I believe you wish to continue ruling in your own right.”

There’s a chorus of agreement, and Sansa lets out a slow breath. It is a comfort that her advisors do not wish to see her subservient to a husband.

“No man would accept the offer without at least an expectation of becoming my trusted advisor,” she says gently. “I do not think there is a great appeal to being a stud for breeding and perhaps occasionally greeting important guests.”

“Women have done it for time immemorial,” Lady Cerwyn points out, and Sansa cannot dispute the point but—

“We were not presented with any other options,” she says. “Men are raised to expect that they will be given the freedom of their own choices, and that their wives will be subservient, especially noblemen.”

Silence falls for a few moments as Sansa’s words are considered, but a voice from the far end of her table calls out, “This does not address the need for an heir.”

Sansa closes her eyes, letting herself have a moment to take stock. Her shoulders are tight, and her breath is shallow. She does not like the idea of marriage, or of childbearing. Much as she would enjoy a babe or two around the castle, the weakness and vulnerability of the process unnerves her. But her advisors are correct that she needs a plan, and she’s unlikely to have any close relations to name as her successor. 

“I will think on it,” she says, standing and sweeping from the room in a swirl of skirts.

—

Jon does not write her a letter saying that she needs to trust people, but it’s because he does not need to. She knows that it’s what he would say.

He does not write at all for a long time, in fact. Months pass, the days growing warmer in increments so small that sometimes Sansa thinks she’s imagining it and that the last scraps of winter will linger endlessly, damp and overcast and dreary. She finds herself missing the crisp sunshine of winter, sparkling across the snow in the bitter cold.

Sansa does not write either, does not tell him of her council meetings or the conversations about whether she needs a husband, and what role her husband could have, and who her husband could be. A Northerner, of course, because she needs to mollify the remaining pockets of skeptics, which a union with a Southern lord could not. The consensus is that she does not need to strengthen her alliance with the South, that having her brother on the throne will suffice.

She does not correct them about it, does not explain that King Brandon is scarcely her brother, or anyone’s, that he is something perhaps not even entirely human. 

At least there are no more ripples of insurrection. Sansa does not have to hear any reports of plots on her life, or pass any sentences for it. The problems she’s faced with are banal things, the regular scuffles of people slowly coming back to their lives after the cold and the war. 

In the end, though, Sansa is the one to break the silence, unable to hold herself apart any longer. 

—

The letter Sansa writes is full of carefully chosen words, all deliberation and specificity. She rewrites it entirely once she’s found the right words, unwilling to let Jon see how much work went into shaping every turn of phrase and molding every paragraph. 

She asks why he said he could not stay, and if it was truly because of all the memories of being at Winterfell, or if he feared something else. If he did it to protect her from uprisings in the country, or if he did it to protect his own heart. In exchange for the prying question, she offers up something of herself, a terse paragraph about the things she fears. She tells him about her advisors asking her to consider taking a husband, and how she cannot help but think of the ones she’s already had. 

_I do not even know if I can marry_ , she writes. _I do not know for sure that I am not legally Tyrion Lannister’s bride_. _Perhaps that would be a better option; after all, then I would never truly have been Lady Bolton_. She burns that draft. It is not really treason if it comes from the Queen’s own hand, but she does not need to stir the rumors.

The response is slow in coming, but it does. The raven returning it to her is flecked with brown. Spring is setting in earnestly, and the early flowers are starting to push up green shoots through the sodden ground. 

_It was all of those things_ , the letter says, Jon’s hand even messier than it typically is. Unlike Sansa’s careful missive, his is full of scratched out words and false starts. _I could not bear to have had any role in endangering your life or your rule_ ,” he wrote, and, _I would rather know you are safe, far away from me, than be at your side and have you in danger_. 

Sansa has to set the letter down to squeeze her hands into fists and breathe deeply before she continues.

_I miss you every day_ is the next line, written after two attempts at something were scratched out. _It is not easy for me, either, being away from you. From our home._

She runs her fingers across the words, helpless. 

—

_I’m happier with you here,_ she writes, later, and then she scratches the words out, tossing it in the fire for good measure. She tries again. _The danger was present before you returned, and it has not gone away. Your company brings me comfort when I must face it down_.

—

The words are scratched out, but Sansa can read them under the black lines. _I fear watching you die_ , Jon has written, _and I fear being the one who brings it about_.

There are things they have never spoken of, things they have only discussed in hints and allusions. Sansa knows there was someone before Daenerys, a woman Jon loved deeply who loved him in return. She does not know that woman’s name, or how he came to know her, or the cause of her death, save that Jon holds himself responsible. That much was clear from his eyes and the set of his mouth, even when he said nothing. 

For her part, she has never told Jon about her stay in the Eyrie. He knows about Ramsay, a wound that was so fresh when they found each other that she could not have hidden it, but not as much about what happened before. But there are other things, quieter fears that she has never fully pushed away, that she has not found the words to share with him.

Perhaps she could put them down in a letter, though.

—

She does, to the best of her ability. It’s a dire tale to tell, and one about which Jon already knows the broad strokes. But he does not know the lies she told in the Vale, the things she did with Baelish. Her desperation throughout it all. The horror and relief of her first return to Winterfell.

_Burn this after you have read it_ , she writes hastily at the end. He would anyway, but she cannot contemplate leaving off the direction.

The response she gets is a long time coming, and long when it finally arrives. The pages are full of things she knew, or guessed, about Daenerys and his time with the Night’s Watch, and after that they’re full of details of Jon’s life about which she knew nothing. A wildling woman. His time beyond the wall. The horrible choices he made.

She knows she needs to burn his letter as well, but it’s surprisingly difficult to find the will to do it. He’s bared his soul to her, even if not for the first time, and Sansa wants to be able to treasure the words.

Still, she casts the letter into the embers of her fire after the maid has banked it for the night, letting it smolder until all the words have vanished forever.

—

She does not write back for some months, at a loss for what she could possibly say. All she can do now is offer herself, her trust in him to not bring the same fate to her.

And trust is a fragile thing. She cannot promise him never to take risks, nor can she swear that she will never go mad, or be forced to take up arms against him, or any of the other things he fears. She can offer him herself, and little more.

It does not feel like enough.

—

Jon sends another letter before Sansa has figured out with herself what she can say to him. It’s shorter, more conversational than soul-baring, and Sansa relishes it as well. She writes back about the meetings she has with her council, about meeting with her subjects, about the rebuilding of the North. The simple things are easier to put into words. 

She’s still waiting for a response from Jon when she finds herself seated in her solar, writing him another note after a long day with her council in which they managed to resolve nothing about the best methods for ensuring fair grain collection and distribution throughout the summer.

_Jon_ , Sansa finds herself writing, the words setting themselves down before she even considers them, _For every skeptic of my claim to the throne who calls you a kinslayer, there is one who speaks longingly about your time as King in the North._

_If you decide that missing your home outweighs the bad memories, we can find a place for you. After all, I do still need a Hand._

—

The third time Jon comes to Winterfell after the war, he slips in late at night, somehow making it not just past the guards but all the way to her door unnoticed. Ghost is next to him when she opens the door, looking sheepish.

“I did not wish to be seen,” he offers as a greeting. 

Sansa steps back to allow him in, unable to bring herself to speak. Jon closes the door behind himself, the latch catching surprisingly loud against the silence. She is taken aback by how quiet her chambers are when the fire is not roaring in the evenings, but it’s too warm for that now. 

“If you are caught, a secret visit to my chambers late at night will set all the tongues wagging,” Sansa says, finally.

“I can hide my tracks,” Jon says. “Tomorrow I can make an entrance.”

Sansa gives him a mildly dubious look.

“Ghost is hunting in the forest, far enough away that it would be believable that I did not make it to the castle until dawn,” Jon offers.

“You think of everything,” Sansa says, and then she flings herself into his arms the way she did that bitterly cold day at Castle Black. Jon clings the way he did then, or perhaps even closer. His hand tangles in her hair, and hers in his. In his lighter cloak for spring, she can press her face much closer to his skin. “You came,” she murmurs. They’re so close that she can almost brush her lips across his skin.

“You asked,” Jon replies, the words pressed into her hair. 

“I offered,” Sansa corrects him, muffled by his skin.

“You offered,” Jon says. His hand tightens in her hair. “I wanted to come. I missed you.”

His grip on Sansa loosens, just enough that she can set her feet on the floor and take a half step back from him. “And I you,” she says, striving for dignity she does not feel. She feels giddy, the way she did when she was a girl caught up in dreams of romance. Jon catches her hand in his, squeezing it for just a moment before he drops it.

“It isn’t always easy for me to be here,” he says softly. “But it’s better than not being here. If you still want me. You offered—”

They’re standing in the middle of her chambers. Sansa is only in her nightclothes. Everything about this is absurd, and none of it is how she ought to ask someone for the honor of serving as her Hand. She does not even know if a disgraced former king can serve in the role, though she imagines she can make rules about these things.

Sansa takes a deep breath. “I did.” Jon is not quite meeting her eyes, and that makes it easier to speak. “A Hand is not like other advisors. It needs to be someone I can trust implicitly, someone who will disagree with me without hesitation, but with whom I agree on the fundamentals of what a ruler should do. It is more than trust.”

“I know that,” Jon says. Sansa wants him to look at her so desperately she thinks she might be shaking with it.

He does not.

“Do you think it will ease things, if I stay?” Jon asks. His voice is steady, which Sansa appreciates, as she feels anything but. Still, his eyes are fixed on the wall beyond her shoulder.

“Some things, probably,” she says, and then, “Other things will be worsened.” She’s silent for a moment, not quite able to meet Jon’s eyes, and then she adds, “I don’t care. Stay anyway.”

Jon swallows, and this time, when he speaks, his voice quavers. “Are you sure you wish for me to stay as your Hand?” he asks. His eyes are so dark, and they are not quite meeting hers.

“I cannot imagine trusting anyone else as I trust you,” she says, but her voice is unsteady too. It is not the whole of the truth.

“Is that all?” he asks. She can read his mood now, the hesitation in his eyes. It is not enough for him to stay as her Hand.

“It is not all I wish,” she says.

Jon closes his eyes, his shoulders rising and falling as he takes in a deep breath. “What do you wish?” There is a hope in his eyes that Sansa has never seen there before. A hope, and a fear.

And yet the words are hard to find, for she has never had occasion or desire to say them before. He is the only person she fully trusts, but yet that is not enough. She wants his counsel, and his comfort, and his companionship. She will not renounce her throne to a husband. But she does not think Jon desires that, merely something she cannot put into words.

“Just—you are already everything,” she says, gusty on an exhale. “Stay as my Hand, but also as my friend and my certainty and my—”

Lost for words, she takes his hand in both of hers and draws it to her lips to kiss his knuckles.

“Sansa,” he says. He sounds like he might weep.

“Everything,” she says. She sounds so certain that it takes her by surprise, even though she _is_ certain, it’s just that the words are difficult to find.

Jon kisses her then, moving with such determination that she does not realize what’s going to happen until it already is. He kisses her like he’s drowning and she is his only hope at salvation. Sansa does not feel like a savior, even with his hand clinging to her hips and his mouth hot against hers. 

All she can think is how no one has kissed her like this before. Her arms are around Jon’s neck, pulling him close, her fingers tangling in his hair. He is not pulling away—he does not doubt that she desires him—she _does_ want him. 

When Jon pulls his mouth away from hers, she chases it, stealing another kiss before he steps away from her. His hands come up to cup her face, and he kisses her forehead just before he whispers, “I will stay,” against her skin. 

—

Sansa does not take him to bed that night, though she does kiss him until her lips are rough with it, and her cheeks are flushed. Jon is breathing heavily when he pulls away, and she can feel the way he wants her, in all the ways a man does. She wants him too, her blood rushing hot with it. 

He sleeps in her bed for a few hours, until dawn begins to crack the sky and he has to leave so that he can be seen returning in daylight. Their legs were tangled together when he woke her to let her know his plans, and Sansa had barely been able to resist the urge to draw him back to her. 

Jon kisses her before he leaves.

—

Jon’s entrance into the hall in the late morning turns some heads, but not as many as on his previous visits. He kneels before Sansa this time, and waits for her to acknowledge him before he rises. He kisses her hand too, a perfect show of courtly respect. Sansa can’t help wanting to laugh, because it’s such a performance, when he also sneaks into her chambers in the middle of the night and sleeps in her bed.

A smile cracks her face, but Jon smiles back at her, and she thinks her heart might burst. 

He stays by her side the rest of the day.

Sansa tells her council the following morning, presenting it as a fact rather than a matter up for debate. Jon Snow will be her Hand. 

They tell there there will be comments, that tongues will wag, and she nods.

“He will be a good Hand,” she counters, and they cannot argue with that.

—

They have made no promises, and yet when they retire after supper, Jon follows Sansa to her chambers. His hand catches hers after they say their goodnights, a safe distance from prying eyes. The servants are still occupied downstairs.

It’s well known that Queen Sansa prefers privacy after her supper. 

They have spoken no vows, but Sansa remembers the way Jon looked at her the previous night. The way he inclined his head the second time he returned to Winterfell. If those are not vows stronger than any spoken with words, Sansa does not know what is.

She has not let herself think on it overmuch, has not let herself anticipate that she might ever get to have this. It has been so long since she could imagine wanting anyone other than Jon, and only lately that she had begun to imagine it even possible.

And now he is here, standing in her chamber, a nervous smile curling his lips. He says her name softly, stepping close to her, and she lets him. He kisses her the way he had before, deep and intense and unlike anyone else. Sansa’s hands curl in his shirt, in his hair, against his skin when she gets them there. Jon’s do the same, his fingers ghosting around the neck of her dress and fumbling with the lacings.

Sansa’s own fingers are clumsy when she reaches for the ties of her clothes, and clumsier still when she reaches for Jon’s, but he helps her and then—her breath catches—they’re standing bare in front of each other. Her chamber is not quite warm enough for it, and she shivers at the sudden chill.

“Come to bed,” Jon murmurs, his voice low, somehow pitched deeper than it usually is. 

“It’s my bed,” Sansa says, laughing. “Should I not be asking you?”

He smiles. “Well, then,” he offers.

“Take me to bed,” she says. She bites her lip, and Jon catches his teeth on it when he kisses her again.

“As my queen commands,” he murmurs against the skin of her neck. 

—

After, they are snuggled deep under the furs of Sansa’s bed, the fire crackling low. Even now, there is a chill in the room. Stone is like that, always threatening a reminder of winter. Sansa is warm, though, her skin pressed against Jon’s. Still, it takes her a long time to find the courage to say what needs to be said.

“I cannot wed a Targaryen,” Sansa says quietly. “Enough of them already whisper that I am a Lannister, or a Bolton. I cannot add another name to the list.”

“I am not a Targaryen,” Jon whispers, his face resting so close to hers that she can feel the breath of it. “I am a Snow. Or a Stark, if you prefer.”

“Not an advantageous alliance,” Sansa replies, laughing despite herself. “I am already a Stark.”

Jon laughs too. “I have not asked you to be my wife,” he says. “I vowed to take no wife, you know.” The smile at the corner of his mouth belies his words, as does the way his hand curls around her hip. “Perhaps I merely want you to warm my bed.”

Sansa kisses him. “You don’t,” she murmurs, swallowing the noise he makes.

“I don’t,” he relents. “But we do not need to wed to have this, at least not for now.” She raises her brow, and Jon’s fingers sweep across it gently. “You have already named me your Hand.”

Sansa catches his hand, winds their fingers together. “I thought you weren’t going to stay just to be my Hand.”

“I’m not,” Jon says. “Unless you plan to have me removed from your bed.”

Her smile at this is helpless, and Jon raises their joined hands to his lips. “I don’t want to be a king, or a prince. I want to be here with you, nothing more.”

“I will need an heir,” she says, closing her eyes because she cannot bear to look at Jon as she says it. “I imagine I’ll need a husband for that.”

Jon shrugs, as much as he can with one shoulder pressed into the bed. “Well,” he starts to say, but when Sansa opens her eyes, she can see a smile tugging at his mouth. “I hear it’s possible out of wedlock.” His face turns serious, his dark eyes meeting hers. “I believe we can sort something out. Perhaps a wedding will be possible in a few years, or your subjects will accept a legitimized bastard.”

It’s an idea. Sansa nods, just a quick motion, and squeezes Jon’s hand. “I trust you,” she says. “We don’t have to solve every problem tonight.”

“No,” Jon murmurs.

When he kisses her, she lets herself forget all her fears about the future for a few moments.


End file.
